Archive for the ‘Mom’ Category

I’ve been asked to write about my mother, CeeCee. She was born February 28, 1928, and she died October 13, 2013. CeeCee was a mystery. She and I never got along, but it was due to a secret she carried. I discovered it after she died. It wasn’t written down anywhere; it’s just that I’m…

I hurt my back a few days ago. Actually, I ruined my back in 1992, when I was working as a field representative for a document-retrieval service. More on that later. Though I have more problems than you can imagine, denial isn’t one of them. That’s an emergency-room wrist band. At 8:00 a.m. I drove…

Today I hung out with several of my mother’s friends from the Historical Society. It’s the first time I’ve seen them since Mom died. I have mixed feelings, since only one of them visited Mom in the hospital. A person who isn’t my favorite anyway decided to try and pick a fight with me about…

My mother and I didn’t get along. It wasn’t her fault; I can’t explain our problem because that would violate her privacy. She was stuck with me. Staunchly pro-life, she couldn’t have had me aborted, and everyone knew she was pregnant with me, so she couldn’t have given me up for adoption. In the last…

My mother CeeCee Lower Wictor was a rebel. Her rebellion took the form of quietly, politely, and very gently refusing to conform to society’s expectations of what a Mexican-American woman born in 1928 was supposed to be. She and I never got along—until the last three years of her life. Then I became her closest…

Later in this post I’ll describe the best Christmas present anyone has ever given me. A simple gift, it altered the course of my life. This post will (hopefully) show the impact that the present had on me. Christmas was always a major affair in my family, due to my father’s love of the holiday….

People don’t like my posts on Israel. They decide they’re going to “fix” me by “letting me have it.” Unfortunately for them, they lack the imagination to understand that I’m impervious. The ordinariness of their communications to me is…extraordinary. Their attacks are always the same: 1. Making fun of me for my looks. 2. Making…

I like living in the United States. It’s a great privilege. However, too many of my fellow Americans are idiots. The current fad is to march and protest because police kill black men. No other people count, which proves that the marchers and protestors are acting in bad faith. They don’t actually care about police…

There are certain phrases that are so elegant that they sound inevitable. Tim thinks “meandering belligerence” is one. I wish I’d coined it! To me “Pink Panther” is a great example. Also “the music of the spheres.” The phrase “music of the spheres” refers to the intertwined relationship between the structures of music and those…

Today I got a funny message. It couldn’t have come at a worse time for the person it was intended to help. I’m in a trough. Oh, I’ll climb out; I always do. But yesterday I realized that the rest of my life is going to be as unpleasant as its been up to now….